Technology has revolutionized the way we live, work, and interact with others. It’s created connective ties around the world that have, in turn, advanced almost every facet of human life from healthcare to transportation. According to the United Nations, digital technologies have advanced at a faster pace than any other innovation, reaching around 50% of the developing world’s population in just two decades. With digital capabilities at our fingertips, we can collectively unlock efficiencies that propel new discoveries in our modern world.
The biopharmaceutical industry has seen transformative benefits of digitization. Digital solutions allow for interconnected workflows and data interoperability that can enable collaboration, streamline workflows, and offer informed decision-making across organizations and fields of study, which can further discoveries that lead to a healthier society and a cleaner, safer environment for all. Amid the rapid advancement of medicine, the industry must look to life sciences technology providers for solutions that meet the industry’s high standards and help them achieve their overall goal of getting life-saving therapies to patients as quickly and safely as possible.
The virtual key to unlocking lab efficiency
A Gartner survey found that digitally mature organizations are more likely to consider deploying innovative digital technologies for new use cases, which often results in greater return on investment. For biopharma companies, there are clear benefits of digital transformation that are convincing biopharma leaders to make moving toward an intelligent lab a top priority.
Incorporating digital solutions throughout the pharmaceutical value chain creates a wealth of opportunities for modern scientists. For example, critical steps in the experimentation process that were once completely manual can now be digitalized, automated, and optimized so that researchers can collect data faster. Companies can also choose digital solutions that allow them to connect multi-vendor instruments across labs so that everything from maintenance information to data collection and analysis is centralized.
Data connectivity is essential for accelerating scientific discovery. It not only allows for cross-functional collaboration, but it can enable scientists to scale up research when there is an urgent need, such as the race to find a vaccine at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Pfizer relied on a network of digital solutions and technology transfer to speed the complex drug development journey of its mRNA-based vaccine from molecule to manufacturing and commercialization.
Next-generation technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), and automated laboratory solutions, such as robotics, can also improve workflow processes, increase efficiency, and generate accurate, reliable results when pharmaceutical researchers need them most. Connecting next-generation technologies, cloud-based digital solutions, and automated systems creates a holistic ecosystem that propels life sciences innovation.
Digital transformation driving discovery
Breakthrough discoveries have been made possible by digital transformation across scientific modalities, such as advancing healthcare toward precision medicine. Digital tools have been able to connect proteomic insights from mass spectrometers, data from genetic sequencers, and other analytical instrumentation to help advance research that aims to deliver new, targeted treatments and therapies across disease states. Today, these tools are generating large amounts of data—with more to be generated in the future—which require digital technologies that can help scientists pinpoint and explore the data in new ways, opening avenues for discovery. Novel technologies allow scientists to explore new areas of disease research and create innovation at scale, pointing us in the direction of personalized medicine and a healthier society.
In the pharmaceutical industry, research and development (R&D) scientists can lean on digital solutions to accelerate the complex journey from molecule to medicine. From small molecule drugs to advanced therapies for hard-to-treat diseases, such as cancer, digital twin technologies can make a significant impact with advanced simulations and predictive modeling, allowing scientists to simultaneously test drug candidates in controlled experiments. This technology can help researchers overcome drug formulations challenges, which play a crucial role in the creation of accessible and efficacious therapies.
For example, scientists developing oral solid dose medications often encounter challenges of low solubility and bioavailability, which must be resolved before a drug candidate can move to clinical trials. Historically, pharma researchers have used trial-and-error experimentation, which is time-consuming and costly, but leveraging AI/ML platforms that can enable in-silico predictions of formulations can save time during a critical step in the process.
As pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical companies look to transfer their findings from research to manufacturing, next-generation technologies can also streamline quality assurance and quality control (QA/QC) during the drug manufacturing process. In the highly regulated pharmaceutical industry, QA/QC are crucial and optimizing the process with AI/ML tools can ensure that pharma companies can quickly commercialize live-saving therapies and get them into the clinic as quickly as possible.
Shaping the future with a digital scientific ecosystem
For the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical industries, investing in digital solutions across the value chain can have a direct impact on patients as it supports the safe and effective development of new therapies. Adopting digital solutions ensures that organizations can streamline end-to-end workflows, reduce R&D costs, encourage collaboration, and prioritize innovation. To build labs of the future that support modern scientists, industry leaders will need to overcome any roadblocks to adoption by starting to have conversations with life sciences technology providers who can help guide them along the digital transformation journey. As digitization becomes an industry standard, research will advance in extraordinary ways as new discoveries unlock the potential for what’s possible with science.